Disclaimers:This is a work of
non-fiction.An earlier version of this
piece was published online in July 2009.This piece has not been
approved, authorized, licensed or endorsed by any entity or person involved
with the Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, including Anne Hathaway.

Fanciful notions
of a grittier, angrier New York from the long-forgotten 1980s swim through my
mind as I plod up Central Park West. Things change. When I was a kid, I knew
(don’t know how, but I knew) that Central Park was one of those places you just
didn’t go at night; the black sky’s kiss had this way of transforming the
verdant paradise into a shrouded haven for winos, vagrants, thieves, brigands,
prowlers, prostitutes, rapists and garden-variety outdoorsmen in search of
casual encounters.

I know things
change. The city knows things change. The great mixed bag of gentrification
swept through such bugbears of decades past. Now people push strollers through
Alphabet City and the most horrifying thing you’ll face in Harlem is a guy selling
terrible artwork on cheap t-shirts. And very few people get killed.

Still and yet,
the prospect of braving Central Park at night dutifully strikes the odd chord
in my privileged Caucasian bones, as if I’m in for real adventure lending me
legitimacy and, in a word, cred. Why, a thrill was totally with me as I did my
Internet research on the matter. Call it a new step in my lifelong love affair
with the dark.

It is somewhere
between 2:00 and 2:30 in the morning on Sunday, July 5, 2009, and I am making
my first proper and serious attempt at tickets for Shakespeare in the Park,
specifically, Academy Award-nominee Anne Hathaway as Viola in Twelfth Night.

For the
uninitiated, Shakespeare in the Park is the brainchild of legendary producer
Joseph Papp, whose vision of free Shakespeare in (you’ll never guess) the Park
has been part of the metropolitan fabric since the 1950s. The agreeable ticket
price aside, the program has proven a beloved cultural institution, attracting
star-studded casts from both Broadway and Hollywood and some of the most
dedicated culture vultures you’ll ever meet.

Exact
ticket-acquisition procedures have varied from year to year. At present, by
which I mean between 2:00 and 2:30 in the morning on this particular Sunday,
tickets are distributed at the Delacorte Theater at 1 PM on the day of the
performance. What this means to the hopeful consumer can vary. At this point in Twelfth Night’s run, thanks to
Hathaway’s star power and a rave review from the Times, arrival any later than eight in the morning is a fool’s
errand, and even seven is pushing it.

It is no later
than 2:30 AM when I reach 81st Street.

The old familiar
buildings look different at night, or maybe the whole city feels different;
hard to say, really. My erratic schedule as a freelance layabout has more than
once granted me the sublime experience of feeling like the only person in
Manhattan, out and about in the strange hours where one can walk streets with
even the most iconic of brand names and find not another human in sight, nary a
moving car or a sound to prove the island still populated.

Speaking of
unpopulated lands, nobody’s piled outside the gates of the park waiting to be
let in, which implies to me, barring neutron-bomb-induced holocaust, either
that I’m the first arrival or that the fashion is to scoff at the park’s
not-terribly-enforced closing time of 1 AM. I presume the latter, or perhaps
assume, and tentatively creep in as if expecting someone to leap out of Diana
Ross Playground and purposefully violate my anal cavity.

Not that I
condone trespassing, of course.

There’s a nice
young couple playing with a dog about fifty feet into park proper; if they’re
there, it can’t be too bad. It also means the cops aren’t going round sweeping
the park with flashlights just to toss out eager beavers.

This sets me up
for a prime opportunity to make the most of my early arrival.

Which I blow.

Predictably, I
get lost by overcorrecting for a turn near the Marionette Theater and only
reach the Delacorte around 2:45.

There are
already about ten people lined up.

I claim my spot
in a nice patch under a tree, my bed a pile of soft wood chippings. I am
greeted by David, whose last name I never ask nor learn, who will be my
neighbor and friend for the next nine-and-a-quarter hours. “Are you here for
Shakespeare tickets?” he asks. (Ruining my planned opening line to him: “So,
what brings you here?”)

The people ahead
of us clearly wanted it more. David tells me that the first guy on line claims
to have arrived at midnight. How he didn’t get thrown out of the park at
closing time is a mystery. I admire the spark of the true earlycomers. They’re
not young whippersnappers, either; indeed, I am the youngest person here by
several years. Most are New Yorkers. The tourists will come later.

As David
inflates his industrial-strength air mattress, which he’ll later twin with two
soft folding chairs and a portable DVD player, I lie down on the wood, or
perhaps lay down, rest my head on my backpack. It’s about 3 AM. I yammer Star Wars trivia at David until he falls
asleep. Through the trees, in my little shred of sky, I can see one star above.
I will stare at it long enough to see it rotate.

Other people
drift in over the course of the night. I nod to them, say hi. I am not sleepy,
and in any case I’ve never been much of a napper. I have deliberately corrupted
my sleep schedule to get here at this ungodly hour, understanding that my
chance to score a ticket would plummet with every minute post-sunrise. I mean,
this was a whole production—I stayed up really absurdly late on Friday,
slept in past 1 on Saturday, I even took a nap in the evening. In essence, I
have done nothing of value with my weekend but tamper with my natural rhythms
to get me here. I am reminded of the famous headline from The Onion: “Dressing Up Your Dog As Boba Fett Is Something You Have
To Devote A Weekend To.”

At some point
between four and five in what isn’t yet morning, a man in an unmarked truck
shows up to open the restrooms, for which I am grateful; it’s not that I’m
inexperienced or ashamed about tree-based urination, it’s just that for some
reason this seems the wrong setting. I go to christen the men’s room and pass a
fellow queuer, reciting some sort of monologue to himself. Maybe Twelfth Night? Who knoweth?

It occurs to me
that there is now no moment on the 24-hour clock that has not found me, at some
point in my life, out on the streets of New York. The hours move quickly. I
turn on my cell phone at 5 AM just in case anyone wishes to call me, for
reasons I cannot explain even to myself; perhaps I’m hoping someone will call
and ask where I am at this hour. It’s a good story; it’s good to have a story.
As the sky lightens, I realize that I’ve polished off the ‘bum’ phase of this
adventure. Soon the park will officially open and I’ll be there as a perfectly
legitimate citizen. This vaguely disappoints me.

Twelfth Morning, or, America On Line.

You can’t really
watch the sun rise unless you can see the horizon, and ideally there should be
a woman beside you, but this is still the first time in years I’ve been awake and
paying attention to the sky as the night slips out of it. I will take what I
can get. It’s a gradual process, and yet not: join a conversation for two
minutes and the world becomes different before you catch it.

At around 5:30
AM (so very, very AM) the patterns shift. Traffic configures. I speak of people here. No more little
clumps of two and four. Actual droves take the plain, swarming the grass like
disciples flocking to their preacher of choice; if I hadn’t known better, I’d
have said that some tour bus or trolley had pulled up for the express purpose
of dropping off hopeful patrons of the arts. The line quickly shoots north. It
is a twisting, curving little road, and soon I cannot see where any new
additions land. I only see them arrive, storming over the fields, power-walking.

I get to know
only my immediate neighbors. A New Yorker cartoonist combating a bout of Bell’s Palsy, sporting an eye patch. A
genial geek in a black hooded sweatshirt, his bed head (wood-chip-pile head?)
never quite remedied over the course of the day. A bespectacled, bearded, bald
man of Stentorian voice. A beautiful girl in pajama pants and an ironic t-shirt
who has criminally bespoiled a perfect face with a nose piercing. I do not
learn most of these peoples’ names. We are what Fight Club so memorably called single-serving friends, us bold folk
at the head of the line; the entire purpose of our being here this early was to
ensure that we wouldn’t spend another day this summer sitting in the line with
each other.

I say “the
line”, but there are really two lines, as there’s a special one for seniors and
the disabled. The first senior arrives at around 6 AM.

The term
‘extreme culture’ really needs to be coined, if it hasn’t already.

I stand, review
the competition. I have much to admire, and a worthy spot to do it from. Oh,
the people up front have a more advantageous area to sit in, perhaps, but I
have space. I can swing my arms, I can see more people. The seating isn’t all
bunched up on my little tree-lined corner. This is the basic question driving New
York real estate, and by association all of New York: neighborhood versus
space.

And I prefer to
stand in my space, incidentally. It helps me meet people. Given my
high-visibility location on the corner and my general shaggily approachable
demeanor (for some reason I’m always the guy people ask for directions or “do
you work here?” in stores), I meet people. I am eager to become what urbanist
Jane Jacobs calls a public character.

After the fifth
or sixth time someone asks me, “What time did you get here?”, I fashion a sign
reading 2:45 in bold Sharpie. This proves a popular conversation-starter or
–stopper, dependent on my whims. Many passersby laugh when I point to the
sign in response to the question. Many passersby even mock-sympathize.

And there are passersby
indeed; I tell them the same stories I’m telling you now. When they ask how far
down the line goes, I say, “Try Astoria.” (My geography is muddled here, I
should really say something like Riverdale, but Astoria is a much funnier word.
The funniest Bronx neighborhood, incidentally, would be Baychester. That’s what
I really should have said. Throggs Neck is funnier to read than to say, and
Spuyten Duyvil just calls too much attention to itself.)

(Oh, and Throggs
Neck is the neighborhood, Throgs Neck is the bridge. In case you were
wondering.)

They’re New York
people, these people, whether all their lives or just for the day. There’s the
people who laugh and the people who just move on.

Then there’s the
chipper girl who interviews me for her video blog. We talk for about half an
hour and I end up holding the camera for her intro shot. We get it in one take,
just before the battery goes dead.

Then there’s the
giggling woman who asks if she can get a picture: me with my 2:45 sign and
David and his wife on their air mattress, watching Blindness on DVD. It is merely the most memorable of many tourist
photos I turn up in.

For the line is
an impressive entity, and I encourage anyone visiting New York in the summer to
make it a part of their Central Park tour. It stretches at least a quarter of a
mile, a snakelike beast buzzing with energy, dotted at every turn with little
communities and strange sights to see. It’s a linear Burning Man, Woodstock in
one dimension. People set up tents, lay down colorful blankets, play board
games. Deliverymen troll up and down the line on bicycles, calling the names of
whoever ordered takeout. A genial chap offers to rent me a tripod stool for
five bucks. Tourists gawk; jaded New Yorkers jog by.

People swap
stories about being in line. Lines they’ve previously sat in. Folks they’ve
seen, times it rained. Theories of arrival times and handicapping. There’s a
science to all this: a popular rule of thumb has it that the geographical
cutoff point for tickets sits around the swing set, and anyone between the
theater and the swing set is probably safe.

Then there’s the
toothless black man who tells me about how he used to go clubbing long into the
night before swinging in for show tickets, back in the day.

Then there’s the
woman strolling through the park with her tiny kitten in a pouch around her
neck, a little tabby, can’t be any more than four months old, looking around at
a world still so new to him.

Somewhere in all
this I befriend a local raccoon, enjoying the daylight. What mischievous trick
of evolution made these rascally bandits so cute? I’m finding all the animals
very socialized here, actually; a little hopping robin will come to visit
me several times over the course of the wait, and sparrows surround me without
fear… I’ve disparaged them as boring birds in the past, but up close their
browns become more distinct, patterns emerging in the plumage. All told,
though, the avian attention makes me feel like a Disney princess getting
dressed.

The entire
affair is nearly scuttled when a disconcerting clutch of pigeons
congregates in my general area. Rats with wings, spreading disease. Mercifully,
they leave me alone.

Twelfth Afternoon, or, The Mushy Middle.

At pretty much 1
they get us organized to hand out tickets. I give high props to the staff for
keeping things orderly, but the studiedly random scheme of individual ticket
distribution befuddles me; you would think that first-comers would get better
seats, but my assignment to Row T does not fill me with confidence. So much for
the meritocracy. If having the free time for urban camping can constitute
merit.

Still, I have my
ticket. Which is more than can be said for anyone that day who arrived after
5:45. In the morning, that is. I cannot stress this enough.

I have nearly
seven hours before curtain, all the time in the world. Even allowing for
excursions to the restroom or the hot dog cart, I have not left a specific
hundred-foot radius since 2:45 AM. I have stood in one place and watched night
turn to day; watched clouds become wisps and then empty blue sky, watched the
park shake its colors from forbidding inky wasteland to a tourist’s playground.

I haul myself in
a southeasterly direction, to the jewel they call the Apple Store, to
reacquaint myself with civilization and to crow about my ticket to the lazy
Sunday lollygaggers in my social network. It’s as good a destination as any,
and I want to see something today.

Central Park is
a confusing place to explain. It’s the only place in Manhattan where you can
lose sight of where you are, where the orderly grid of numbers and streets
means nothing. Sometimes you can’t even see buildings.

Supple bodies
are littered about like leaves, tanning; there’s an oily girl in a bikini
everywhere you look. Bicyclists, rollerbladers. Little street bands doing
Michael Jackson covers. I’ve never seen most of these corners, statues, but
then, I have a way of getting lost in here. I pass several people who cheer out
“Ghostbusters!” in response to my fashionable logo-festooned t-shirt, and one
impromptu recitation of the theme song lyrics. I get this a lot.

It would be
appropriate for me to mention the Shakespeare statue, watching over everything.
Sadly, I don’t pass it. This diminishes my travelogue considerably, I know.

I emerge from leafy
green onto 59th Street in the height of full-on tourist scramble. It’s hot. I
collapse near a fountain, and sit and collect myself for a bit, staring up at
the Plaza Hotel. I splash water from the fountain onto my face without shame,
being careful not to disturb the pennies that are people’s wishes. I’ve gotten
too many of mine to dishonor that.

But I ascertain
too late that the heat has made me comically delirious; I find myself weeping
with joy in FAO Schwarz at the sight of all the happy kids, marveling at toys.
Just giddy and close to bawling. This happens at least three or four times.
Actually, sometimes it’s not even the kids that set me off. Sometimes it’s just
the toys.

Upon heading for
the park again, I find myself recollecting my many adventures, and what an
amazing experience I had being on line, and mustn’t New York be just the most
special place to bring a kid on vacation, and long story short I’m in tears
again. I have not slept since 8 PM the previous evening, and it is probably
time for me to calm down a bit. I feel a deep connection to Holden Caulfield’s
memorable blubber… you know, when he watched his sister ride the carousel in…
Central Park. He wound up in the loony bin not long after, right?

I wind my way up
through the park again, giving ample and careful berth to the carriage horses.
My affection for horses has historically been limited, and in any case I prefer
to keep my distance from any abused animal larger than a Pekinese.

A crowd has
gathered at the Strawberry Fields Memorial. Presumably they’re feeling
something for the recently-late Michael Jackson as well, letting one fallen
musician stand in for another; the connections are tenuous at best,
but you can feel the sensation, and though I would not have thought to remember
Jackson here, I, in a word or two, get it. As I always do when in the area, I
pay my respects to Lennon, with a minimum of fuss. Two fingers pressed to the
lips, down to the stone, and I’m up and I’m gone.

I never stay
long. A song at most. I’ve never felt the impulse people have to leave things
behind that will only be swept away. But I comprehend the need to gather; the
artificiality of everyday life compels us to go to specific places to feel
again.

I’m back at the
Delacorte by four. This begins the unpleasant portion of proceedings, as I am
at this point very tired. I never quite find an enjoyable rock to sit on, and I
feel myself threatening to doze off whilst attempting to read. My pretentions
extended toward packing books about acting and the theatre (yes, folks,
we’re spelling it British-style). They were hardcover, which was stupid. They
were heavy and I can’t even focus on them.

I am hoping for
a ‘class reunion’ atmosphere with the people in my cluster of the line, but it
never quite comes. Some don’t even seem to recognize me, as if it all happened
a thousand years ago. Even David barely gives me fifty words. Maybe all our
bonds were meant to break when the tickets came out; in an era when everyone
has to be friends on Facebook, where we trade business cards and store numbers
in our phones within minutes of contact, maybe it’s important to know people
just once and let them slip away.

I change my
shirt to a dark blue polo. Classier and less likely to provoke people into
chirping the biggest hit from Ray Parker, Jr. I take off my shoes and socks,
which is kind of like heaven. My two notes for if I ever do this again: bring a
chair with a back, and fresh socks.

Aside from a
brief interlude wherein I help a senior citizen over a fence, this is an
uneventful period, and I really, really struggle to stay awake. I will not have
slept for twenty-four hours by the time the proverbial curtain rises.

Twelfth Night, or, What You
Will.

I confess to
being unimpressed with Row T, Seat 403. I was one of the first twenty arrivals
and my reward is one of the worst twenty seats. A look around the nosebleed
section reveals many from the just-past-midnight crew, moping like spurned
lovers; my eye-patched cartoonist companion is particularly irate. Luck of the
draw, people. Luck of the draw.

Next to me sits
an older gentleman with someone I presume to be his niece, explaining the plot.
I’ve never seen the show and I’ve only read it once, but the program is most
helpful in imparting the Cliffs Notes version. Said program also includes a
lengthy summary of the rationale for picking Twelfth Night and some photos from past productions; this has
evidently been a popular choice for the Park lately, and the whole thing lends
the occasion a sense of history. It is well and good to support live theatre,
the Bard in particular, if only because movies keep proving that you cannot
place a 35mm camera in front of Hollywood’s most luminous ladies, shoved into a
vest and jaunty cap, and expect to honor the illusion of a convincing boy
disguise.

This document is
a travelogue, a stream-of-consciousness journal, not a piece of arts criticism,
so discussion of the play itself will be kept to a minimum. It worked: it
started slowly, yes, and laid on the clowns a little thick, but the folk-pop
score was enchanting and the comic energy built to a wonderful ending. There
can’t have possibly been an unsmiling face during the final dance.

So what if I
hadn’t slept in twenty-seven hours and my eyes looked like I’d spent the whole
time smoking up; I felt alive, enthralled. And I’d shared this whole day with
eighteen hundred other people.

Call it a brief
repudiation of Bowling Alone. What a
miracle it was, this epicenter of communal experiences, of people coming
together to see and do and be, eighteen hundred people together. Once all in a
line, now in weaving rows, moving, feeling, applauding.

Well, all in two
lines, really, because, disabled, and seniors.

Thirteenth Morning, or, The Next Stage.

Having waited at
stage doors many a time, in my time, I must award props to the Public Theater’s
way of doing things. They organize us by hand, not rope, into one line and
facilitate autography, no theatregoer left behind. I deem this appropriate to
Joseph Papp’s vision of a theater for the people. Everyone is not only signing,
but having conversations; some of the cast are so friendly that one thinks they
might be fishing for a dinner invite.

As befits the
trend of uniting top-flight theatrical talent with the luminaries of Hollywood,
the two big names I’m excited to meet are Audra McDonald (Olivia) and, no
surprises here, Anne Hathaway. McDonald emerges first. The four-time
Tony-winner not yet at her fortieth birthday just looks like a cool, casual
college student in a t-shirt and jeans; she is the first person I have ever
seen who looks younger offstage than on. I wish I had a better story to tell
her than, oh, hey, I saw HBO’s Wit a
few months ago. The family to my right, it turns out, contains one of her old
college professors, and so there is an amusing reaction to be had.

But really, I’m
in line for Anne Hathaway. I’ve been in line for Anne Hathaway since 2:45 AM.

Every
right-thinking man is entitled to a celebrity crush, unrealistic and not to be
apologized for, and Anne Hathaway has long been mine—supplanting even the
once-undethronable Jennifer Aniston. Like I said, things change. And friends
will attest that I’m a sucker for innocent-looking brunettes; Hathaway, all big
brown eyes and effervescent smile, is so much an expression of my type that it
verges on parody.

My heart does a
beat-skipping flop when I catch a glimpse of her around the bend. It is strange
to see her as a real person. I don’t mean real in the everyday-clockpuncher
sense but in the sense of her material presence as a physical creation. As if
the concept of Hathaway only existed in fiction and in other people’s
photographs, and she decongealed into an intelligent energy when not required
for a picture. I think I would have been just as surprised had they wheeled out
a life-sized mannequin of her, mounted on a little red wagon.

She comes
closer. It doesn’t occur to me to consider the irony that I’m beginning and
ending this adventure on a line. The family to my left has young daughters, no
older than ten, who I assume know her best from The Princess Diaries and its regrettable sequel. (Or maybe they’re
huge fans of Havoc, what do I know.)
She bends to talk to them, like a princess—like the ones at Disney World.
I am sure they will never forget this memory. Me too, kids. Me too.

“Welcome to the
very, very, very small list of people I’ll get up at 2:45 for,” I say, hearing
myself stumble and waver as she signs my program. “Get to Central Park at 2:45,
I mean.”

(She knows what
I mean.) I barely hear her. My head is swimming.

“Is it all right
if this gentleman takes a picture?” I ask, indicating the patriarch of the
family on my right, who I’ve enlisted as my photographer. Upon a reply in the
affirmative, I hand over the camera, put my arm around her. The arm in question
is numb; I can’t feel anything under it, nor can I honestly confirm that I even
have an arm at all.

And I generally
don’t ask for pictures with celebrities. Autographs, okay, but never pictures,
perhaps in part because I do not like posing for pictures (the process or the
result). But this shot, well, I knew I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t get it.

Two pictures are
taken. She, I am told, looks radiant. I have blinked as usual. This won’t be
the first time I Photoshop new eyes into one of my disastrous pics. That’s
okay; I’m here for the memory, not the journalism.

But I have one
card yet to play. I’ve been working this joke over with a fine-toothed comb for
days now, trying every single variant, and I think I’ve nailed it.

“So, when the production is over,” I
ask, “do you get the second-best bed?”

It takes her a
second.

Okay, maybe it’s
just an Oscar-nominated actress faking amusement. But if it is, then, what a
performance. You could see her puzzling through the joke briefly before
reacting. On the basis of watching the wheels turn in her head, I’m confident
that I have actually made her laugh.

With Shakespeare
nerd humor.

Referencing a
coincidence that every Shakespeare nerd she’s ever met has already brought up,
not to mention the occasional two-bit hack reporter.

Just after
seeing her do… well, you know.

I deserve some
sort of medal for this.

“Yeah, it’s
weird,” she says. “Like, I’ve been discovering all these… like, did you know
she was twenty-six when they got married, and I’m twenty-six now, so… that’s
really interesting to me, but, I’m a dork, so.”

She talks like a
real person.

I probably say
something stupid next. I’m blanking, alas. The imbecilic joke preceding is the
part of the conversation I remember best; even now, as I write this, I’m having
trouble recalling so much of this encounter. I remember the actions but not the
sensation, as if I wasn’t actually there, like I only saw it in a movie. Even
two minutes after she’s moved on down the line it’s turned hazy for me. It’s as
if it wasn’t meant for me to hold onto.

I have trouble
with time, trouble with verb tenses. Past and present mingle. Time to get some
Goddamned sleep.

The city looks
positively magical when I re-emerge onto Central Park West. Even the winos and
vagrants seem to glow, touched by fairy dust. My head swims with more funny
things I could have said to my Hollywood dream—but never mind. I did what
I needed to do.

Perhaps the
sociologists are right, perhaps we have lost our way with the shared
experience. If this is the disease plaguing a soul-purged America, then I have
found the cure in a midsummer overnight’s dream. I conquered new ground in the
city, sat at the fountainhead of a mass gathering in pursuit of high culture,
plunged myself among thousands of people, and yet in the end it all came down
to one meeting with one person I know only through a screen.

Not bad for a
free ticket.

Then it ends as
it began, with me alone on Central Park West, savoring the stillness of the
night. Glenn Frey’s lonely saxophone echoes in my mind, though I know I do not
belong to the city. Not really. Though I like to think there’s still a scrap of
my heart someplace, left behind forever, hidden in a little pile of wood chips
off West 81st Street.

It’s someone
else’s turn to sit there now. I hope it means to them what it means to
me—

“So was my heart forsaken in the dark,
Mix’d in betwixt the wood chips in the
park.”

I won’t quit my
day job. The hours are better.

About the Author

Adam Bertocci is an award-winning
filmmaker, screenwriter, and freelance Bardolator working in and around New
York. He is a proud graduate of the film program at Northwestern University,
with a surprisingly useful minor in English literature.

His crowning
achievement in the highly profitable realm of Shakespeare-fandom scribblings is
the world-famous, critically-acclaimed, surprisingly educational mashup Two
Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragical Romance, praised
by Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The
New Republic, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Back Stage, Broadway
World, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Folger Shakespeare Library.